State officials won't push for 4th-graders to be part of a new Quincy middle school

Thursday

Jul 17, 2014 at 9:57 PMJul 17, 2014 at 10:04 PM

Chris Burrell The Patriot Ledger @Burrell_Ledger

QUINCY – Six weeks after parents protested a plan to send fourth-graders to a soon-to-be-built middle school on the west side of the city, state officials are now backing an alternate plan to build a new Sterling Middle School for grades 5 through 8 only.

The Massachusetts School Building Authority told Quincy school officials that it supports an initial design for a new Sterling Middle School that would have an enrollment no larger than 430 students.

School Superintendent Richard DeCristofaro is “very pleased with the outcome,” said Laura Owens, assistant to the superintendent.

One of two options that Quincy school leaders submitted to the state agency called for building a Sterling Middle School to house about 550 students in grades 4 through 8. But that proposal quickly triggered opposition from parents who think 9- and 10-year-olds shouldn’t be mixing with young adolescents or forced to change classrooms several times a day.

Courtney Perdios, one of the parents who led a petition drive in which more than 500 signatures were obtained, said she welcomed the state decision but remains concerned about fifth-graders being put in a middle school setting.

“I am definitely part of the group of people speaking up about eliminating fourth-graders from the middle school atmosphere,” Perdios said Thursday night. “But I am definitely still concerned about fifth-graders (in middle schools). That’s going to be our next step, at least getting them back on elementary school schedules.”

Perdios and other parents plan to attend the special school committee meeting July 30, where committee members will review the most recent enrollment and design plans approved by the state School Building Authority.

Enrollment in the city’s elementary schools has swelled from 3,593 to 4,228 in the last seven years, but Owens said the situation at Lincoln-Hancock Community School is not at a “crisis” point.

“In the future, we’ll have to look at what we can do in that building,” she said. “Kindergarten is projected to be just about 100 (this year.) That’s not as high as the 125 we had last year.”

State officials who analyzed Quincy enrollment trends said middle school enrollment would increase more than 20 percent in the next decade, from slightly more than 2,600 students to 3,200 students. They factored in families that will be moving to Quincy in that time period.

School committee member Anne Mahoney was critical of the process and called for more input from parents as the plans for Sterling and other schools are debated.

“I don’t think a bigger building makes for better academics,” she said. “It doesn’t have a community buy-in. And saying that there are population problems throughout the whole system, how can we fix it with one school? Shouldn’t we look at it as a whole?”

Chris Burrell may be reached at cburrell@ledger.com. Follow him on Twitter @Burrell_Ledger.